Pasadena charter review moves forward

Published 5:30 am, Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Despite one member's concerns, the Pasadena City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved setting up a review of the City Charter.

The council's vote on the second reading of an ordinance calling for a charter review authorized the appointment of a 15-member Charter Review Committee. It also allowed the city to sign agreements with specified charter consultants.

Written in 1964, the charter was last reviewed in 1992.

With a target date of mid-January for completing its review, the committee is expected to have its first meeting Aug. 17. At that session, the committee will set a schedule for future meetings and discuss other procedural details, said David Benson, executive assistant to Mayor John Manlove.

Bringing recommendations to the council by mid-January would allow the council to call for a May election on possible charter changes, Benson said.

According to a July 20 memo from the mayor to the council, the review committee will focus on two primary questions:

•Should Pasadena keep its existing mayor-council form of government, amend it or adopt the more familiar council-manager format?
•Should the City Council structure be changed from the eight, single-member districts adopted in 1992, and should changes be made in council members' compensation, term length and term limits?
The outside consultants, who are expected to provide guidance on policy and legal issues, include Terrell Blodgett, a professor emeritus in urban management at the University of Texas, Austin; and representatives of two law firms, Knight & Partners in Austin, and Andrews Kurth LLP, which has offices in Houston and eight other cities.

Councilman Don Harrison said he supported the charter review because he wants to see stricter enforcement of the document upon which the city government is based.

"Without enforcement, it's useless to go through this exercise," he said.

Harrison, however, said he had concerns about the cost of hiring eight lawyers.

"It's a waste of tax payer money," he said, in remarks similar to those he made at the ordinance's first reading Aug. 1.

The agreements with the two law firms state that one attorney from each firm will have primary responsibility for providing Pasadena consulting services, with assistance from other attorneys if needed.

Benson said the city had not set a budget for the consultants' services but would leave that task to the review committee, at least initially.

"These are 15 taxpayers," Benson said after the council meeting. "As far as we know, they share the council's concerns."

It would "handcuff" the committee to set financial constraints right away, he said.

"You let them get into the process and you manage it conservatively," he said. "Once they're into the process, we'll have an idea of whether we need to impose a formal limit."